Deanna Joseph

Dr. Deanna Joseph is Associate Professor and Director of Choral Activities at the Georgia State University School of Music where she conducts the University Singers and leads the master’s program in choral conducting. In 2015, she was the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award at Georgia State, where she was selected out of a pool of over 800 faculty.

Under Dr. Joseph’s baton the Georgia State University Singers have been invited to perform at two conventions of the American Choral Directors Association. In May of 2013, the University Singers competed in La Florilège Vocal de Tourswhere they placed second overall in the mixed choir category and Dr. Joseph was honored with the Prix du chef de choer (conducting prize). Additional honors from 2013 include an invited performance at the Georgia Music Educator’s Association annual conference and the North American premiere of David Bintley’s Carmina Burana with the Atlanta Ballet. The choir’s new professional recording, Evening Hymn (Gothic Records), is available starting in the fall of 2015 through both compact disk and on iTunes.

Dr. Joseph is an active guest conductor and clinician and has conducted all-state and honor choirs in more than eleven states. She is a frequent conductor of choral-orchestral repertoire, and has led performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven Mass in C, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, Schubert’s Mass in A-flat and Bruckner’s Mass in D Minor.

Dr. Joseph’s research in the area of 19th century choral-orchestral performance-practice has led to invited presentations on the topic at several division conferences of the American Choral Director’s Association and at the national convention for the National Collegiate Choral Organization. In October of 2012 she was selected as one of 25 presenters from ten countries to speak at the Lund Choral Festival in Sweden.

Prior to her appointment at Georgia State University, Dr. Joseph served on the faculties at Smith College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Dr. Joseph holds conducting degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she was awarded the Walter Hagen Conducting Prize. She is the founder and artistic director of the Atlanta Summer Conducting Institute (ASCI), a weeklong masterclass that draws conductors from all across the country and takes place annually during June.